


Xxxxxxx

by gnashing_teeth



Category: L'Homme qui rit | The Man Who Laughs - Victor Hugo, The Grinning Man - Philips & Teitler/Grose & Morris & Philips & Teitler/Grose
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Confusion, Grinpayne is just a confused man, Memory Alteration, Memory Related, Other, i couldn't do it, i tried to end this happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26727850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnashing_teeth/pseuds/gnashing_teeth
Summary: Grinpayne's memories are just a swirl of confusing thoughts, but he always settles in one place. In one memory that stays the same.
Kudos: 4





	Xxxxxxx

His eyes open, observing the cracks of light between the boards around him. Rattled about by the structure, he blinks slowly. His foundations always jostle him around, nothing is ever stable until he walks out of this wooden crate he calls a home. 

Dripping. 

He cranes his neck and watches as the boards grow heavy like clouds, creaking beneath the strain. The water trickles and then like a faucet it’s gushing. Grinpayne isn’t alarmed. Not anymore. He watches the planks give out and the water rise and try to meet him on his bunk. It laps at the edge, rising to the ceiling and engulfing him with it. 

He swirls in the tumultuous waves, fighting to find a way free, but there is nothing caging him anymore. All he can see in the salty sea is ocean beyond ocean. The cart has fallen away and now he is but a single krill in the endless deep. He knows, no matter how much he tries to swim to the surface, he will never reach it. In vain, like he’s done so many times before, he paddles attempting to get that breath of air that would quell the fire in his chest. He’s raking through the waves until his muscles burn more than his lungs. And finally, like he has done before, he submits. 

He sinks, down into the inky blackness of the sea. Beneath his feet, he hears the familiar crunch of ice as he is suddenly upright and in an endless white. In his mouth he tastes it now, a sacred liquid never meant to be savored.

The copper metallic of blood. 

Around him he sees the nooses, the faintest sensation of the rope being around his own neck. They appear like constricting snakes coiled on posts and taunting him. Appear like shackles around his wrists to imprison him for wrongs never committed. 

He feels razors in his mouth as he crumples to the floor in a neat ball. It’s a stinging flame that draws his hands to feel the bandage and the jagged cuts beneath it. Rocking himself like a baby is the only comfort he knows. 

Or so he thinks. 

It feels like velvet petals in his mouth. Holier than rose water, it’s sweet with the most bitter aftertaste, but it numbs. His head grows fuzzy, like watching a single drop of blood dilute in water. The memories ripple and fade to become the liquid they were consumed in. He feels his confusion, but the taste enters his mouth again and spins his head harder until he is in darkness.

It’s a faint reverberation of the name he hears as he stands the murky path.

Crimson Lethe.

He’s lost again in the corridors of his mind. A maze of rooms and mirrors that surround him in dank hallways. He knows behind one of the doors will be his memories. Proper ones. But he knows they will ruin everything, the weight of the truth would break him. 

Or so he hears. 

Through the walkways it’s like a devil’s whisper. A doubt that encircles itself deep into primal parts of his brain. From the corners in the shadows he can see the two men dancing their way through the rooms. One of them is so familiar, so familial that he feels a dull pang in his heart while he watches the man enter and exit. The other is a stranger to him, but he feels a kinship still. A type of pity that twists in his gut.

Grinpayne wishes he could follow them. Wishes he could drift through the doorways like they can, but he’s tried it before and failed. It’s a horrible heckle, hearing those eerie steps echo through the walls, but never being allowed to follow.

He is only allowed one place in this labyrinth.

A mirror, its silver fading to black blotches in parts of what was once a flawless piece of glass. It corrodes his image as he stands in front of it, like it has too many times before. Feeling the ache at the corners of his mouth. He watches himself, slowly lifting his arms up towards the knot at his head. Watches as his fingers expertly unwrap the death’s kiss behind the blood dried fabric. Jaw twitching, observing the ghastly grin move, every tooth exposed. 

He lowers his hands, his fingers twitch in the reflection; he always hesitates at this part. They hook into both sides of his mouth as he tugs against the scabbing slash. He’s pulling the exaggerated expression further and further. He can taste it again, see it in the mirror too. The weeping wound trickling warm red down his face and soaking into his shirt and sleeves. 

The pain should be agonizing, his hands shouldn’t be able to inflict so much damage on himself. But it’s all numb. 

He is numb.

There, next to his bleeding form in the mirror, he sees a sliver of somber light. Flurries of ice whirl in through the crack and he turns to see the door open behind him. A pile of snow lays between the frame as he opens it fully to see the scene. 

It’s the same cold as the noose yard. Same biting frost that dulls the throbbing in his face.

Trudging through the flakes, he watches his breath leave him, every exhale taking shards of his soul. It’s the sound of his steps crunching in the snow that keeps Grinpayne going. And a deeper and disturbing knowledge of what he’ll find. 

It’s red hair, splayed out in a fiery display. It looks soft; inviting. 

Dipping his knees into the freezing wetness, he kneels beside the body like she is an angel and he is there to worship her. He crumples forward, laying himself in the ice. Her red hair is as soft as it looks, even if stiff by the frost. Languidly, he fumbles with the strands, turning to his side to better examine them. The warmth of his breath begins thawing some of them as he brushes melting snowflakes with his fingers. 

His eyes grow heavy like the last logs left to lay on a pyre. She could be the flames. In her hair, his traces along, trying to figure out how he got here. How any of this could make sense. He’s so very tired. He thinks he can die here. 

Tears begin to sting his eyes, threatening to fall and be reclaimed into the cold around him. His mind is a mess. His memories blend together in such unnatural ways. The only constants are the taste of copper and the sweet-bitter mix of Crimson Lethe. Grinpayne feels the pain in his chest like a rancid boil ready to burst. There is something more he needs to do here. Something he is missing. Something he can’t… remember. 

He is sobbing into the stranger’s hair, humming a tune until he carries the song in broken rasps in the snow. His vision blurry, as he watches a pair of yellow eyes in a black mass stare intently at him. A white figure next to the beast, hovers a hand over its body. They seem to be approaching. 

Grinpayne feels the tendrils of unconsciousness wrap around him, but not before seeing the forms come closer. It’s a silent, single laugh that comes to him. 

He is sure he saw an angel.


End file.
